My daughter had a book she got for Christmas from a relative. This book is called “Songs to Go.” It is a book that is nothing but random pictures and the lyrics to the songs that are included on a portable music player. Here are some terrible pictures to help demonstrate what I mean:

She loves this thing. Both the book and the music player. I keep saying I will never buy her Kidz Bop (which I until now had been calling “Kid Bops”), but here she is listening to the same lady sing the same twenty 30 second songs over and over and over again, like a reverse siren.

One of these songs is The More We Get Together:

This is nothing but extrovert propaganda. Horrible.

Your friends are my friends and vice versa? And they’re all in the same room? And I have to get to know them all at once? No.

I’ve written some shy introvert versions of this song in case you’re in need of one like me:

The more we have our own time
our own time our own time
the more we have our own time
the happier we’ll be
and I’ll have my own space
and you’ll have your own space
the more we have our own time
the happier we’ll be

or

I’ll see you all on Facebook
on Facebook on Facebook
I’ll see you all on Facebook
and I’ll like your posts
Then you can like my posts and
say “aw” to my photos
I’ll see you all on Facebook
and I’ll like your posts

or

I’m better one on o-one
on o-one on o-one
I’m better one on o-one
‘less you’re that way too
then an talkative buffer
can help conversation
I’m better one on o-one
‘less you’re that way too

It begins by having to drive myself there without a GPS. I’m already screaming and crying and I haven’t even arrived, yet!

I finally pull up, tired and afraid because I don’t know how to get back home. I then have to pay to gain admission to be frightened.

The house is pretty generic save for the yard littered with political signs. On my way in a man introduces himself as my neighbor and tells me a story about how he accidentally ran over his own dog. Shudder.

In the entryway, it is quite warm in the house and I have my coat on. I’d like to take it off but I’m not sure where to leave it. There’s no hooks or coat hangers anywhere. So, I keep it on.

The arrows on the floor lead me to the kitchen. There’s a nice old lady there who’s told me she’s making me a delicious meal, but it’s pork chops, so I have to explain to her that I don’t eat pork. The horror.

A sign near the kitchen door says I should use the bathroom now since I won’t get the chance to later. I find my way to the bathroom. There’s a horrible stench so that I can worry that the next person that uses the bathroom thinks I made it. There’s no toilet paper and then the toilet overflows when I flush it. It’s like they know my every fear and thought.

I’m guided to a bedroom. I have to take a nap while a baby naps. I’m given a monitor and told that I have to get up and help the baby if it cries. Considering I can barely sleep soundly anyway, I reach a half-sleep state and then am inundated with phantom baby cries. Every time I check the video monitor the baby is sleeping soundly. The stuff of nightmares.

I’m instructed to go to the den. There, I find nice comfortable sofas, and on them is the previous nice old lady and a teenage boy. We all have to watch HBO dramas and Basic Instinct together. NOOOOOOOOO!

After hours of this torture. I’m told I can leave, but only if I make up a fun rap about myself and get up in front of all the haunted house employees and enthusiastically recite it. After I do that, and give everyone a nice long hug, I can make my way to my car, which has a flat tire.

I somehow get my tire changed and get in my car. I sense a presence with me and turn around ARGGGGHHHHHHHAAAAAHHH! In the backseat is a blender that I have to pack and ship to someone as a favor.

I leave permanently scarred but very impressed with the specificity and thought that was put into it.

In case you haven’t been following the “news,” it was recently announced clarified by the makers of Hello Kitty that she is, in fact, not a cat. Also, she apparently doesn’t have a mouth because she “speaks from her heart.”

Last time I checked you couldn’t eat with your heart, though. Check and mate, SANRIO! Also, in the children’s book my sister owns, the things Hello Kitty speaks from her heart have quotation marks. Is that grammatically correct?

Hello Kitty is also British, so I guess the correct pronunciation is “Aloe Ke-ey,” and then you jump in the air, tap your heels together and sweep a chimney.

Anyway, at the store the other day I saw this, and I thought, “Well, I guess if Hello Kitty is a little girl, that would explain why this mouse hasn’t been slaughtered.”

Except, you know, for the whole not having a mouth thing. I guess a cat without a mouth also couldn’t or wouldn’t have the motivation to slaughter a mouse. So I’m back to square one. Ooor, that mouse is really a 400lb Canadian man.

I now have an 8 month old/almost 9 month old. She can crawl and just this morning she was standing up, holding my hands, and she let go and stood on her own for a few seconds. I was happy for her but also felt a little jealous of people who’s kids don’t walk until 14 months.

That constantly used expression, “they’re into everything” is certainly based off of fact. And it isn’t good enough to play with something like an age appropriate toy – those are for BABIES. Babies don’t think they’re babies. It’s very tricky.

So we’re at the stage where she crawls around, sees something she’s interested in (wires, dogs, knives, broken glass, smallpox vials – we still need to baby proof our house), goes for it, and then we use our evil ability to walk faster than she can crawl and move the thing she wants. It’s super fun.

Today, when I was moving a box of old CDs from out of her reach, I had a pang of empathy. I imagined what it would be like if every time I reached for my smart phone, a big giant took it away before I could get it, AND THEN STARTED USING IT HIMSELF THE BASTARD. Or if every time, I, a short person, was on my tiptoes trying to pull something off a high kitchen shelf, that same giant comes up behind me and then moves it even higher. What a douchebag. Then, every time this giant denied me the pleasure of learning about something exciting, he spoke to me in a language I don’t understand but in a tone I could tell is pretty condescending. That would suuuuuuuuck.

And the beauty of all of this is, even as we slowly baby proof – moving things as needed, installing safety devices – it still will never spare us from constantly having to be party pooping assholes because one of the super powers babies possess is finding the most dangerous thing or activity in any given environment. There will always be a new dead bug or a fresh dust bunny to find and taste.

I’ve even found myself grabbing a spatula, and literally saying to myself, “This is really important to me and is not for babies. I’m going to put it right here on the floor for safe keeping.” As if that will somehow replace the amazing excitement that is wires – there’s a SURPRISE at the end of them. You just can’t top that.

So as I enter into the new phase of parenthood – Evil Fun Destroyer, I have to remember, as I grit my teeth and my eyes water while my daughter scrapes a cookie cutter against the tile kitchen floor, making a sound that I can only assume is the soundtrack to hell, to allow her the little joys that won’t cause serious injury (save for my eardrums).

And, for real, y’all, if we are taken over by a race of giants we are screwed.